Mind Model of the Trinity

This is part of an essay I co-wrote with my brother almost a year ago. It's a model of the Trinity that's helped me-though the Trinity still remains in large part a mystery. At least it's not a nonsensical mystery. So what follows is my portion of the essay, and the link to the larger essay (which includes my brother's part).

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D3PmOLVlCflxmhatVDEJTQHBuJrP769uTxvaYONvA2E/edit?usp=sharing

George did a fantastic job of bringing up the relevant texts and Biblically explaining the Trinity. I think this video also gives a very solid, simple explanation of the Trinity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gCv-FAjgps&list=PL1mr9ZTZb3TWpnOJV09MuEAwbbQNCS6Qf&index=1

The purpose of this essay is to clearly explain a concept of the Trinity that has been beneficial to me. I will rely strongly on the Bible, Edwards, and the concept of God as the immaterial Mind that sustains all things.

First, we start with God as an immaterial Mind. He is not His creation. He is not a man (Numbers 23:19), nor is He like any created things.

“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth." (Exodus 20:4)

This text can only mean that it is improper to worship created things because the created order is a shadow of the glory of God. God must not be in the "likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth, or that is in the water under the earth", otherwise this commandment would be rather confusing. This also must mean that even the spiritual beings in heaven do not fully resemble God; while they and us may be in His likeness, He is not in our likeness. He transcends it. Even when God reveals Himself in glory, only He will fully understand the mode of His own existence. This is where we must ground our discussion of the Trinity. We will not be able to posit an exhaustive model, because only God has exhaustive knowledge of Himself. Nevertheless, I'll give it my best shot :)

Now, according to the best theories of science (Bord Guth Velinkin, the Big Bang), all multiverse systems/ universes would have had to have a beginning. This means that matter itself would have had to have a beginning. We can deduce that all things that begin to exist must have a cause. If nothing existed before the created order, and the created order came into existence without a cause for no reason, then it becomes inexplicable why anything doesn't pop into existence without a cause. Why just universes? Why not two headed monkeys? Why not George? However, if matter had a beginning, then clearly it could not have been caused by something material (i.e matter causing matter). It follows then that the cause must be immaterial. If this cause is indeed God (which, I would argue elsewhere that strong evidence points in this direction), then it follows that God Himself must ultimately be immaterial (or of a substance that is non-material, a different kind of material then any material of the created order. Look up the essence/energy distinction in God). Here is where I conceive of God as Ultimate reality, the one reality in which all reality is founded. God is a Mind that exists, and is necessary for anything else to exist. I conceive of God therefore as the Divine consciousness that is self aware, supremely powerful, the source of all goodness (what Plato called "The Good"), etc.

The basic concept of the Trinity can be summarized as such:
There is but one being of God.
There are Three Persons of God.
Each Person is fully God.

Let's examine the terms "being" and "Person". "Being" is what I am. I am a human being-a human flesh with bones, organs, blood, and a lot of other things I don't want to think about over dinner. It's my "stuff", my substance. Personage is who I am. It is my self-aware self, my center of consciousness so to speak. So there exists one being of God, yet three Persons of God.

I will repost that video link here. I will assume the stuff mentioned in the video in continuing. It's only three minutes, yet really really awesome! The dude has other stuff on his channel about the Trinity that might be helpful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gCv-FAjgps&list=PL1mr9ZTZb3TWpnOJV09MuEAwbbQNCS6Qf&index=1

So, according to the concept of God as a Mind, God would be an eternally existing Mind with no "parts" so to speak, but rather as one undivided essence (or being) with three "points". In other words, God would be one Mind with three centers of consciousness. Within God's Mind, there would be three self-conscious selves. There are three "points" in God's mind where information is being processed-three selves who are self aware of themselves and each other.
The Father would be the source of the Godhead, pouring out His essence into the Son. The Father, in His eternal contemplation of His own perfections, beholds the radiance of His glory in His Son. All of God the Father's perfections are being reflected back to Him as He beholds the Person of the Son. The Spirit personifies the divine love existing between Father and Son. (I would look at Jonathan Edwards' essay on the Trinity for a fuller, more detailed explanation of this)
The Father's thoughts, then, aren't really independent of the Son's or the Spirit's, and vice versa. At any given moment, the Persons of the Trinity, being that they share the being of God, share a common Mind, know each others' thoughts in the most intimate way possible and yet are distinct centers of information (thought) processing for this mind. This implies that at any given moment, the Persons of the Trinity know what each other are thinking, feeling, and experiencing. It would also imply that the thoughts of the Persons, while distinct (as Christ has a will subservient to the will of the Father), are always in accord and are fully known in the Godhead. We can model the Trinity like this:  

So, the Persons of the Trinity are distinct, yet they exist as one God, one Mind. They have distinct thoughts and emotions, yet the thoughts and emotions that they do have are never independent of each other. Nor are the Persons of the Trinity ever in conflict; rather, since God is one, the Persons of the Trinity act as one in all that they do. When one Person of the Trinity experiences something, this experience is never exclusive to one Person of the Trinity. I imagine then that in the Cross of Christ, when Jesus bore the wrath of God, there must have been both unimaginable joy (as God's purpose was being fulfilled) and incomprehensible pain in the being of God. The Persons would each be having distinct, distinguishable experiences, yet the experience would be fully known throughout the Godhead.

The Persons of the Trinity are also fully God individually, and fully God collectively. I don't pretend to understand this mystery-however, while difficult to understand, this isn't impossible in theory. Consider H20. In order for hydrogen to bond with oxygen, it needs to fill it's shell of two electrons. Oxygen only has six, and wants to have eight. Therefore, one electron from oxygen and one electron from hydrogen is put in a "pool", and the same oxygen molecule does the same thing with a different hydrogen atom. The oxygen then draws on that pool of two electrons from one, and two electrons from another, and, having donated two electrons in total to the pools (leaving it with four), it draws on the two pools to reach 8 electrons. However, each hydrogen also draws on the respective pool to have two electrons. For all intents and purposes, it's as though the hydrogen is sharing the two electrons fully. Obviously, this is not a perfect analogy. However, it's not impossible to conceive that within the being of God, three points in the essence (substance) share the essence completely and fully, while still being distinct. To be sure, the Persons are not "separate individuals" in the sense that they exist separately. Rather, they exist as one, not in personage, but in being. They share a common essence; without any one Person, there would be no God, even though the Father is the source of the Godhead. This is because the Father shares and pours out His full essence into the other Persons of the Trinity.
Finally, it's important to remember that the Persons of the Trinity are always present in each other. When we behold Jesus, we behold the Father. This is not because Jesus IS the Father; this is because the Father is perfectly present in Jesus. Jesus does whatever He sees the Father doing-in Him, we see perfectly what the Father is like. The only way we can have communion with Jesus is by the power of the Holy Spirit. In the Spirit, God the Father and Jesus Christ are present. Yet the Holy Spirit is not identical to the Father or the Son-rather, He is the active agent of both Persons, and brings us into communion with the triune God.
So to summarize, God is a singular mind with three centers of self-consciousness. These three centers process information, have emotions, feel, experience-yet are not independent of each other, and are simultaneously aware of themselves (fully aware) and of each other (fully). The Persons have perfect, shared knowledge, since God is one. They are distinct and unique in function, yet are remarkably united in action, thought, purpose, and feelings. For example, the Father or the Spirit did not become incarnate; the Son did. However, the Father and the Spirit were working in and through, and were present in the Son throughout the incarnation. They were fully aware of the Son's feelings, doings, thoughts, deeds, and experiences. And Father, Son, and Spirit were always in accord in all things. Likewise, the Son and the Spirit are present in the Father, and the Father and Son are present in the Holy Spirit. God is therefore a unity, but complex in that unity. Yet, being that His Mind is One, so the Persons of the Trinity, while having distinct thoughts, they do not think separately and have "separate" thoughts. They always have thoughts, intents, and feelings that are in agreement and fully known in the Godhead.
When we behold God-incarnate, we cannot do that without God the Spirit. And we can never approach God-incarnate in spirit and in truth without glorifying and drawing near to the throne of God the Father. "Whoever has the Son has the Father." (1 John 2:23) The Father and Son must always be central to our worship, with complete dependence on the Holy Spirit to worship with proper affections. Therefore, aware of the tri-unity of our great God, we rejoice in the Father who has given us the Son, the radiance of His perfections. And let's do this in the power of the Spirit, and remember that true worship is Trinitarian, because the true God is triune. Of course, one can never solve all the mysteries of the Trinity. "The secret things belong to the Lord our God". A finite creature like myself could never hope to produce an exhaustive explanation of the nature of God. However, I hope this helped, and I hope the Spirit works through this :)

God's Self-Glorification

I wanted to do a brief reflection on an issue I've been thinking about. Namely, I've come to the conclusion that God must act at all times to maximally glorify Himself. For the reasons why I've come to that conclusion, see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SA9hokDLPo

However, that begs the question: how was God maximally glorified prior to creation? That is, if I argue that Cross was necessary to maximally glorify God, how is it that God was maximally glorified before the foundation of the world? To answer this question, we must distinguish between two types of God's self-glorification.

Inter-Trinitarian glorification
Christian theology maintains God exists as a Trinity. (For a fuller exposition of that idea, see here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D3PmOLVlCflxmhatVDEJTQHBuJrP769uTxvaYONvA2E/edit?usp=sharing) So that means at all times, the Persons of the Trinity are constantly exalting each other. So how are the members of the Trinity constantly glorifying each other? They are constantly offering praise to each other, and upholding each other's worth. That means within the being of God, there exists an infinite love and delight. So then, how was God displaying His justice? I've argued elsewhere that justice means "to uphold one's intrinsic value". (For the reasons I take that view, see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Op8GaQnlAo) Within God's triune being, justice was being displayed because the members of the Trinity were constantly esteeming each other's worth. God was displaying the fullness of His qualities within His being. Because each Person of the Trinity is infinite in worth, infinite delight is

External glorification
This deals with what Jonathan Edwards would call "the diffusing or the communication of God's own internal fullness." Within the being of God, God was being maximally glorified because He exists as a Trinity. Thus, at all times, the fullness of His qualities were being delighted in and exalted by the Trinity. At this point, one might object: "how was mercy being displayed?" Mercy is, after all, the suspension of justice. How was grace being displayed? Grace is, after all, unmerited favor. God merits all favor in reality by virtue of His infinite worth. Let's think about what mercy and grace really are. God shows mercy and grace towards rebel sinners out of His love for them. Thus, mercy and grace are really expressions of love. Thus, God was infinitely glorified by displaying the fullness of His love within His triune being.

So let's ask the question: why was sin necessary for God to fully (and externally) manifest His internal fullness? In other words, why did God create a world with sin? Why couldn't He have created a world that is Maximally Glorifying without sin? Here's my proposal: God's inter-Trinitarian glorification (i.e the display of His perfection within His being) cannot be manifested outside of His triune being in the same way as it is communicated within His being. What does that means? It means that because the Father, Son, and Spirit are intrinsically infinite, the communication of God's delight in Himself will necessarily be different among infinite Persons than among finite persons such as ourselves. So if God is to manifest His own internal perfection to beings who are not Him, He must do this differently. God knew that the Cross would be the best way to fully communicate His own internal perfection to finite creatures-and thus, such a world necessitated sin (as the Cross could not exist without sin).

Why is the Cross the best external display of the magnitude of God's own infinite love? Think about it. We see how radical the depth of God's love is when He's willing to die on behalf of rebel sinners, rather than when He loves people who perfectly keep His law. In the latter case, while it would be proper for God to love them, it is not as much of a demonstration to us of the depths of His infinite love. In the latter case, God loves people who in some sense have earned it. "Yet God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." (Romans 5:8) God's love is so radical, so unstoppable, that not even the sin of His people can stop God from showering out love on them. He most powerfully displays the depths of His own internal love He experiences in His inner-life in and through the Cross.

The relationship between Inter-Trinitarian glorification and External glorification-
Let's summarize. God's internal communication of His perfection within His being must be different than how He communicates that internal glory to finite creatures. God honors Himself by infinitely delighting in His own perfections-this is demonstrated in how the Trinity interacts with each other. And because each Person of the Trinity is infinite in worth, each Person's infinite delight in each other is the proper response, and the proper display of love. This internal interaction-the beauty of the Trinitarian "dance"-is communicated to us finite personages through God's radical displays of His own characters. So external glorification is God's act of communicating to finite personages the infinite worth of His constant Inter-Trinitarian glorification. Thus, God created a universe where His internal worth would be most fully displayed out of necessity of his nature (see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SA9hokDLPo). This necessitates the Cross because the Cross (and its effects) is the fullest possible demonstration of the infinite, internal worth of God's being to finite personages. In doing so, God invites rebel sinners to partake in His own infinite delight in Himself. He opens up the highest possible joy to the creature: beholding the full beauty of God through communion with Him.

Concluding Reflections
God's external self-glorification is His way of communicating to us His internal fullness. As Edwards put it, God created the world so as to "diffuse His perfections". The overflow of His delight in Himself motivates creation-thus, God displays Himself throughout the world. And in so doing, God created a world where the beauty of his inner-life would be most fully displayed. This is why God ordained sin, and ultimately, the Cross. Through the Cross, He gives undeserving sinners a perfect window into God's own inner-life. And when we partake of God's infinite joy, we find our highest happiness. So come and drink at the root of this God's perfections. Come to the Cross, and find pleasure unbounded-"pleasure forevermore" :)

Consciousness Proves God's Existence

Can I prove God's existence? Throughout history, this has been a task taken up by philosophers from all perspectives. Aquinas tried with his first-mover argument (an interesting argument for sure). Anselm came up with the ontological argument. Ray Comfort came up with the most brilliant philosophical argument of all...the banana argument. The trouble is that these arguments can seem abstract and complex (save for the banana argument). Is there a simple way to deduce God's existence? I think so. By simple, I don't mean that this argument won't stretch your mind-it will. But if I'm successful, you'll be able to see why your very own awareness proves definitively that there is a God (I will argue that this God was revealed in Jesus later). 

Leibniz Law
Who was Leibniz? Well, he's an old dead dude. But he came up with a lot of neat math stuff...you know, Calculus? He was one of the key people in advancing mathematics to the modern place. He was also a kick-butt philosopher. He came up with a very intuitive law called "Leibniz Law" (-_-). It goes like this:

Let A be some entity/property/process. A = whatever placeholder you want it to be.

If A = A, then whatever is true of A will be true of A. Shocked? It goes on.
If A = A, whatever is possibly true of A will be possibly true of A. Shocked yet? Just wait.

Really quick, we need to understand what philosophers mean by "possible worlds". Possible worlds are the way the world could have been, or the way the world may be. They are semantic tools for philosophers to describe possibility. So, for example, if I say "it's possible that in the future, I may buy a dog", I can say that because in my mind, that's a perfectly coherent scenario. That is, there is nothing internally contradictory about the possibility that I may buy a dog sometime in the future. Thus, because this is possible, there is a possible world where I own a dog. Let's make one more application. Suppose I say "it's possible that God exists." That's because I can envision that as a possible scenario in my mind, and there's nothing logically incoherent about that possibility (all attempts to prove God to be logically incoherent have been abject failures). Hence, there is a possible world where God exists. This is the essence of modal logic-the logic of possibilities. So let's apply that Leibniz Law. If A = God, whenever I talk about God, God must be God in all possible worlds (duh). I can't envision any non-God entity and call that God (duh). So here's what that means for Leibniz's Law:

If A = A, then whatever is true of A will be true of A.
If A = A, then whatever is possibly true of A will be possibly true of A.
If A = A, in all possible worlds, A will always be A.

This is intuitive enough. As a side note, if something is true in all possible worlds, it is necessarily true. That is to say that there is no other possible way it could have been. For example, take 1 + 1 = 2. We could have had any symbols we wanted to represent that, but as for the concept itself-one object plus another object equaling a consistent quantity of two objects-there is no other way the world could have been. One object could never have equaled two objects, etc. Back to Leibnuts, suppose you have A and B. If someone claims they are identical, then this is what should follow:

If A = B, whatever is true of A will be true of B
Whatever is possibly true of A will be possibly true of B
In all possible worlds, A = B

So this is where the fun begins :)

The Hard Problem
There is a problem in philosophy of mind called "The hard problem of consciousness." It is puzzling to everyone who studies the mind how subjective experience could arise out of non-conscious chemicals in my skull. There was a philosopher who talked about "the demon". The Demon knows every movement of every single molecule in the universe. However, he cannot predict the arise of consciousness. Why? Because it is far more probable that I should be a meat bag responding to electrical signals then have a subjective experience. This is because non-conscious chemicals (as far as we materialism goes-unless, of course, you're a pantheist/panpsychic) have no subjective experience. You will not find subjective, first person experience in chemicals...and likewise, in the brain chemistry. You will find the correlates to feeling happy, or sad, or whatever, but you will not find the sensations themselves. You will find the neuro-correlates to the perception of color, but you won't find the sensation of perceiving color itself. This is the baffling part. This is why consciousness is one of the most puzzling issues in science.

And don't worry, what's about to come next is not a God-of-the-gaps argument. Let's take a brief detour and look at deductive logic.
Premise 1: A = B
Premise 2: B = C
Conclusion: A = C

The conclusion follows logically and inescapably from the two premises. I will argue that God's existence follows inescapably from consciousness.

Materialism, Dualism, Idealism
There are essentially three metaphysical views: materialism, dualism, and Idealism.. There are far more, but these are the three I want to hone in on, and which I'll wager are the most popular. Materialism is the view that matter is all that exists, and the rearrangements of it. Aka there is no world of God, spirits, etc. There is only the natural world (and by natural, I mean natural minus God...I'll explain why that distinction is important in a different post). Substance dualism is the view that there are two fundamental substances that composer reality: matter (including its rearrangements), and mind (aka the soul-I will refer to the soul/mind as consciousness from this point on. This is what I believe the soul actually is). Idealism is the view that everything that exists exists as mind. Let me flesh this out.

Idealism
As mentioned earlier, you won't find subjective experience in the brain chemistry. You will find correlates to subjective experience-perhaps dopamine or whatever. But you won't find the subjective experience itself. This is important to note. Philosophers call your subjective experience "qualia". Qualia are all subjective sensations you experience-knowledge, sensation of color, sensation of taste, etc. Any subjective sensation you have is qualia. So if everything that exists is fundamentally consciousness, it means that nothing exists outside of perception. If you think about it, we have no evidence that anything exists outside of perception-observing evidence itself requires the existence of perception (since the act of "observing" is an act of perceiving). This is the view I take. Most Christians are probably dualists-they believe that soul and body are fundamentally different. I don't. Though I'm not the only Christian to hold that view. What follows is a proof of idealism.

Why Idealism is Irrefutably true
The relevant points to keep in mind are these:
-Leibniz Law
-Subjective experience vs neurological correlates to subjective experience. What I mean by this is simply that there are certainly correlates to subjective experience in the brain. Thinking really hard results in higher brain activity. However, correlation does not equal causation, and causation doesn't equal identity. Let me discuss those points.

Suppose event X is correlated to event Y. If Y happens after X, that doesn't always mean that X caused Y. If my heater konks out after some dude moves in with me, that doesn't necessarily mean he's the reason the heater konked out. He could be, but he's not necessarily the reason. Also, if X and Y are causally linked, that doesn't imply that X is identical to Y. So if a chemical causes a certain subjective experience, that doesn't imply that that chemical is identical to that experience. If brain activity and consciousness are correlated (which they undeniably are), that doesn't imply that consciousness reduces to reactions going off inside your head.

In fact (and this is where Leibniz Law comes into play), it emphatically isn't. Leibniz had a thought experiment called "Leibniz mill". If you look into your brain, you'll see a lot of chemicals. You'll see electrical impulses. You will not see subjective experience. You will see the correlates to subjective experience. But you will not see the sensations themselves. So ask yourself, is consciousness identical to material processes going off inside your head? If it were, why is it that I cannot do neuroscience by pure introspection? As Sam Harris admits, "there's nothing about introspection (that is, closing your eyes and looking within) that leads you to sense that your subjectivity is at all dependent or even remotely related to voltage changes going off inside your head." If consciousness were identical to these processes, why is it that I do not have access to said electrical signals?

Some at this point will accuse me of committing the fallacy of composition. That is to say that I am taking what applies to the parts, and applying it to the whole. If consciousness is the result of a bunch of neurons going off, then what is true of consciousness won't be true of those individual neurons. However, the key thing to note about the fallacy of composition is that the parts don't just disappear. Take an airplane jet engine. It is true that there are things that are true of the airplane that aren't true of the jet engine. However, the parts of the airplane don't just disappear. The jet is still part of the airplane. However, if you do introspection, you will not find neurons anywhere. You won't find electrical signals. They practically vanish. Again, I am not suggesting that consciousness isn't correlated to brain activity. However, I am saying that it is not reducible to brain activity.

Let me illustrate this point further. Take Mary. Mary is a Color scientist who for whatever reason loves to study color. She lives in the future, where we have the whole brain mapped. She learns all the physical facts there are to know about how brains process color. She spends countless hours learning these facts. What's the catch? She's colorblind.

So though she knows all the physical facts there are to know about color, and about how the brain reacts when it perceives color, she has no idea what people actually see when they see "redness". She knows the correlates to redness, but she doesn't know what red looks like (because she's colorblind). What does that mean? It means that physical facts about the brain aren't identical to mental facts...and thus, there is something true of subjective experience that's not true of the physical facts surrounding that subjective experience. Hence, subjective experience-consciousness-is not reducible to brain chemistry.

David Chalmers, a philosopher of the mind, came up with a neat thought experiment. For all you know, I might be a meat bag reacting to electrical signals, but may have no subjective experience at all. I might say I do, but that's just my wiring causing me to say that. Really, I'm a zombie-what Chalmers calls a "p-zombie" (a philosophical zombie). I look and talk like you people with subjective experience, but I have none. Why does that matter? You can know all the physical facts about my brain, but that wouldn't prove I'm conscious. You cannot know what I'm subjectively experiencing without asking me about my subjective experience. Here's where Leibniz Law and modal logic come into play:

1.) It's possible that p-zombies exist (they are conceivable-I could be one for all you know)
2.) There is a possible world where p-zombies exist. (Modal possibility)
3.) You could learn all the physical facts about the p-zombies' brains, and that wouldn't tell you about there subjective experience (because they have none)
4.) There is a possible world where physical facts don't equal mental facts (since you could learn the physical facts about the p-zombies' brains, and that wouldn't tell you about their subjective experience)
5.) Conclusion: Mental facts and physical facts are not identical (since if they were, they'd be identical in all possible worlds given Leibniz Law. bam.)

Oh wait. There's more.

Let's consider the fact that there are some animals that can perceive ranges of light we cannot. We must use machines to do it-the machines capture the light (infared, for example), and convert it into a color we can see. However, try imagining a color you can't perceive. Oh wait, you can't. My AP Bio teacher was talking about her sister (or someone she knew) who can look at two apparently red sheets of paper. Her sister can perceive the different shades of red present in those paper sheets, whereas to us, it would just look like the same color. You could learn all the facts about how a bird's brain is processing a particular range of light we can't see, and still not know what the bird is seeing. You can learn all the physical facts about the brain of my AP Bio teacher's sister, and still not know what it's like to see those different shades of red. So check this out:

1.) You can learn all physical facts about how bird/sister's brain is processing color, and not know what they're seeing.
2.) There is something true of subjective experience that's not true of mental facts (because you could learn everything there is to learn about the physical facts, and not know the subjective experience of your subject)
Conclusion: Physical facts are not identical to mental facts via Leibniz Law.

Oh, but I'm not done yet. Consider what I said about Leibniz Mill. Nowhere in the brain chemistry will you find the subjective experience itself. You will find chemical correlates, but you won't find the experience itself. Hence:

1.) Brain chemistry exists.
2.) You will not find subjective experience in the brain chemistry (since you won't find the sensations themselves)
Conclusion: There is something true of consciousness (namely, consciousness has the property of subjective experience aka qualia) that's not true of the brain chemistry (you won't find subjective experience itself in the brain chemistry)

One more just to hammer the point home:

It is possible that this world is an idealist world. It's possible that this world emerges from consciousness-namely, what we think of as matter is really just perception. The world exists as perception + the perceiver. Again, we have no evidence that anything exists outside of perception. When we look at the world around us, we must describe the world in terms of consciousness. By this, I mean we must describe the world in terms of some sort of experience-be it color, shape, feeling, knowledge, etc. All of those are descriptions of our own experiences. And all of those are perceived in consciousness (since we're consciously aware of all of them). So let's apply this to brain chemistry. Let a particular neurological state be BS (for brain state). Let consciousness/conscious experience be MS (mental state). If BS = MS, then if the two are identical, they should have ALL things in common. Clearly, however, this is false. It's possible that idealism is true-unless anyone can prove that idealism is logically contradictory, it remains a possibility. Modal logic will be important here. Thus:

1.) It's possible that idealism is true. (it's conceivably true)
2.) There is a possible idealist world (modal logic)
3.) In a possible idealist world, matter does not exist as fundamental.
4.) In a possible idealist world, mind exists as fundamental.
Conclusion: Since there is something true of mind (can exist as fundamental in a possible idealist world) that's not true of matter (can't exist in an idealist world as fundamental), MS ain't BS. 

Remember that identity is a necessary property-that is, if A = A, it will be so in all possible worlds. But clearly, this is not the case.

And here's where I make my case for idealism, and in turn, theism.

Introspective Argument
Premise 1: The Mind exists
Justification: No one who's thinking can deny this.
Premise 2: The properties of the mind are not that which matter has.
Justification: Above arguments.
Conclusion 1: Mind is not reducible to matter-because they are not identical. The properties of the mind don't reduce to physical properties of matter. Hence, by Leibniz Law, they are not identical.
Premise 3: Substance dualism is false.
Justification: This will probably be most controversial among Christians, but I think the materialist actually knows what's up here. If, as the dualist says, there is an immaterial soul interacting with a material body, how should they interact?

Here's what I mean. We know square circles don't exist because those are logically incoherent entities-that is, squares and circles have properties that are directly opposed. They could never be joined together as one shape. How can something that's fundamentally immaterial interact with something material? They would just go through each other. Thus, if the soul is immaterial, how could it ever interact with a material body?

Interaction requires that the two things interacting share a common property. But if the immaterial soul (i.e consciousness) shares a common property with matter, then they can't be two separate substances. Either mind shares a physical property with matter, making mind physical, or matter shares a mental property with mind, making matter actually mental. The common property can't be a combination of matter and mind, because otherwise, you have the same interaction problem arising. Thus, either everything has to be mind, or everything has to be matter. There is no middle ground.

But if we've already established that the mind exists, and mind is not reducible to non-mind, then mind is a non-physical entity. However, if substance dualism is false, then no other substance can exist. Mind wouldn't be able to interact with any other substance...yet it clearly interacts with our bodies. Hence, the conclusion follows:
ALL IS MIND.

Idealism is true. This leads us to accept one of two conclusions.
SolipsismSolipsism is the view that only your mind exists and everything is a projection of it. But there's a strong defeater for solipsism. For one, if this world were really a projection of my mind, the moment I become aware of that possibility, I should be able to manipulate it (ever had a lucid dream?).There's an even stronger defeater though. If this world were a projection of my consciousness, then the external world (that is, the environment external to me) is built of my consciousness. The consciousness that exists "out there" is self-reflexive. That is, it exists with respect to me. However, any consciousness that exists with respect to me (to my own self), must be self-conscious. It is, after all, my consciousness. Then the obvious question arises: how can I be unconscious of my own consciousness? The consciousness in the environment must be self-conscious, since it only exists with respect to the self. So I should be omniscient if solipsism were true. I cannot be unconscious of something that is allegedly part of my own consciousness. That's a contradiction in terms. Hence, we are left with only one other alternative.
Theistic Idealism
One of the obvious questions asked of idealists is this: if the world truly exists as fundamentally mental, why can't I manipulate it by just thinking of it? Easy. This world isn't solely my consciousness. The alternative to solipsism is this: this world exists in a much larger mind, and we're all projections of that mind. This Mind we can call "God". Therefore, the reason I can't manipulate the structure of the world is because God Himself-the much larger Mind-is in control of the structure of the experience. We are His creations-thus, we exist in the environment He Himself has projected with His mind. Given that the premises of the Introspective Argument are self-evidently true, and solipsism is self-evidently false, we are left with no other alternative. Given how consciousness cannot be identical to brain chemistry via Leibniz Law, we are left with the conclusion that there is a much larger Mind that contains our minds. This has exciting implications for theology, philosophy-man, how you live your life in general. I will flesh those out later. This post is meant to be an introduction to idealism, and the reasons that led me to accept it over substance dualism. For anyone who cared enough to read, I hope you got a lot out of this argument. I will link some helpful resources for further investigation. Thanks for reading! :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l1lQMCOguw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBsI_ay8K70&list=UU5qDet6sa6rODi7t6wfpg8g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=720zEnzgTyM

The first two may be really helpful. For scientific evidence from quantum mechanics, see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4C5pq7W5yRM

Can I Prove the Resurrection?

Can I prove that Jesus rose from the dead? Facts of history are often hard to prove. How is it that we know that Hannibal crossed the alps? Well, from two historians testimonies: Polybius (a Greek historian), and Livy (a Roman historian). These accounts are riddled with contradictions-but both agree that Hannibal did cross the alps with a truckload of elephants. They meet a historical criteria called the criteria of independent attestation. That is, when two sources, independently written, attest to a singular event, that event is more likely to have occurred.
                I use the word likely. That's because historians deal in probabilities. It's possible that actually, Hannibal crossed the alps with a truckload of alien monsters that looked like elephants. However, that's just highly improbable, so as to be a ridiculous option for any thinking person. When we come to Jesus, new testament scholars use similar criteria to evaluate his life, his historical context, etc. Those who deny Jesus's existence are on the radical fringe (in fact, no "mythicist" holds a teaching job of history at any accredited university. Not one. Yikes)-and the vast majority of historians, be them atheist, agnostic, Jewish, or liberal "Christian" (I use that term lightly), think that we can know some stuff about him. So the next few blog posts will be my attempts to demonstrate that the Resurrection is as historically likely as Hannibal crossing the alps, or the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem at the hands of the Romans in AD70. The first issue I need to get out of the way is this: did the disciples just lie about it?
               No historian thinks that the disciples lied-virtually all historians that have studied the issue since the early 18th century have agreed that the disciples sincerely believed what they were preaching. However, you will find this idea to hold sway among many internet atheists. Why is that? Well-they simply haven't given it much thought. 
                When you consider a historical claim, you must consider that claim against the context of its history. For example, if I were to say "Albert Einstein was a bad man because he left Germany and became famous in America. He forsook Germany for fame"-that would be entirely untrue. If I proceeded to make sweeping generalities about how men often do selfish things for glory, and then project those reflections onto Einstein, I'd come across as a moron. Why? Einstein left because he was on tour in America, and couldn't go back because Hitler took power, and Einstein was of Jewish descent. 
              So when you think about the disciples, it will not do to say "lots of people claim wack-job things they don't really believe for glory." The moment we project such a reflection onto the disciples, we play the role of the ignorant dude who makes the above claim about Einstein. So what was the disciples specific context?
              First, we must understand what "Resurrection" meant in a first century Jewish worldview, and an ancient worldview in general. "Resurrection" was not a way of saying "little Timmy's body lies in the grave but his soul goes marching on". It was always a way of talking about a return to life. The Pharisees believed that Resurrection was corporate; that is, it was something that was supposed to happen to everyone at the end of the world, not one person ahead of everyone else. This is well documented through Josephus, Philo of Alexandria, and early interactions between Christians and Jews.
             Secondly, the ancient pagan world categorically denied that resurrection was possible. Just read Homer, where the view of the after life is a life in Hades. In Platonic versions, the soul escapes the flesh and goes off to a world of unembodied bliss (sadly, many Christians have picked up on that vision, which is simply un-Biblical). The Epicureans believed that the god or gods were way out "there"-they never interacted with our world, and simply let man go about his own business. Democritus believed that all that existed was atoms...like a modern materialist. I could go on and on. Simply put, the ancient Greek world in which the early Christians were surrounded by denied that resurrection happened. The Jews who believed in Resurrection believed that it would happen to all of God's people at the end of the world, not one person ahead of everyone else. That's why the Apostle Paul, in his letter to the early church in Corinth, says that the Cross is "folly to the Greeks and a stumbling block to the Jews" (1 Corinthians 1:23). On both the Jewish side and the Gentile side, the Christian doctrine of resurrection was seen as absurd. 
              A word about Messianic movements. Jesus wasn't the only ancient Jew to make Messianic claims or cast a Messianic vision. We know of several movements on either side of Jesus. To list one movement, Simon bar Kochba revolted against the Romans after they had destroyed Jerusalem. He had excited hopes about himself that he was the Messiah. He, like all Messianic figures before him, was publicly executed in a triumphal procession, where soldiers would whip him and at the end, kill him. Messianic movements had a common pattern: either the movement disbanded, or the adherents found a new Messiah. In the dozens of the Messianic movements on either side of Jesus, there was no case in which the adherents continued to champion their founder as Messiah. There's a very good reason for that.
             Ask yourself: what is the point of crucifying people? The crucifixion of Jesus is something virtually all historians agree about (like, 99% in the words of agnostic new testament scholar Bart Ehrman...certainly no friend of Christianity). When a criminal or someone who presented some sort of threat to Roman rule was crucified, it intimidated Rome's subjects into submission. The message implied was this: if you follow in the footsteps of this dude, you will be crushed. So it was with all Messianic figures. The execution of the founder strongly discouraged the followers of the figure from continuing.
             Finally, let's take a look at the context of persecution that existed around the early Christian community. It is a known fact that Nero blamed a fire in Rome on the Christians, and that incited persecution. It is also a known fact that Pliny the Younger, a Roman historian, records the persecution of Christians (they were killed unless they admitted they rejected the Christian faith). Even earlier than that, we have evidence of persecution right from the church itself. Paul, before he was a Christian, used to persecute the early church. We know this because he presupposes that the readers of his letters have heard about his life as a Christian-killing Pharisee! (Galatians 1:13, 1 Corinthians 15).
            So let's think this through. When we turn to the early disciples, what do we find? We need only use a bit of historical imagination. When Jesus had been killed, that seemed to demonstrate that Jesus wasn't the Messiah. Messianic expectations were of a figure who would overthrow Israel's enemies, not get crushed by them! We know that from the Dead Sea Scrolls, and from the messianic figure in Daniel 7, as well as God's promises to establish his kingdom through the Davidic king in Isaiah 9, among many other passages.
          To a society where resurrection was just as absurd to them as it is to us, is it rational to expect that the disciples made up belief in the resurrection? Would they really say "let's continue the movement by claiming that Jesus rose from the dead, even though that's absurd to our listeners, even though that will tick off the Jewish authorities, even though that's unpopular with the Gentiles, and even though we are setting ourselves up for some serious persecution and imprisonment"? Would the disciples really embrace the persecution that would arise from claiming Jesus rose from the dead-especially in light of the fact that they're getting nothing from it?
           Consider their situations in life. Most of them were Jewish peasants who were content with their relatively peaceful lives. They had nothing material to gain from claiming Jesus was risen from the dead. That wouldn't have gained them popularity, as the Gentiles thought that was stupid, and the Jews thought that was blasphemous and slanderous against God. It didn't gain them money, because the early Christians often were beaten, imprisoned, and didn't have access to a whole lot. No one would have paid them for preaching such an absurd idea anyway. The financial support they got from churches was provided for the spread of the Gospel-more church plants.
          So if one is to maintain that the disciples were insincere in their belief, they must maintained that the disciples willingly embraced persecution, mockery, insult, imprisonment, and for many, death, all to champion a belief that was absurd to their culture, knowing that their lives would be a heck of a lot harder because of this belief. Is this rational?
         Maybe they just wanted to continue the memory of their friend. Sorry, this doesn't work either. What they may have said is: "God has exalted him among the martyrs." That may have actually been helpful in honoring Jesus. But they didn't say that. They claimed he was risen from the dead, and was the Messiah. This sets Jesus up for the obvious critique: a Messiah wasn't supposed to get crushed by the enemy. Where was God's reign through the Messiah? Where was the establishment of Israel? By their standards, Jesus was a horrible Messiah. That wouldn't honor Jesus's name-that claim would've set him up for ridicule.
          Maybe they wanted to gain fame. This doesn't work either, for all the aforementioned reasons. Claiming that Jesus rose from the dead would've brought them shame in the Jewish culture, and ridicule by the Gentiles (indeed, it did. Paul spent a good amount of time debating Epicureans and their ilk!). Maybe they wanted a sense of community that's characteristic of church. That doesn't work either-they had a strong sense of community as Jews. Israel was built off of that sense of tight-knit community.
           So again, if one wants to maintain that the disciples lied, then they have to maintain that the disciples decided to preach a doctrine that was ridiculed by their culture (when they knew it was a lie), all for the glory of being beaten, mocked, looked at as fools, imprisoned, faced with opposition from the Jewish elite and the Gentile law, and killed (as following such a figure and claiming such things entailed the strong possibility of death). They were willing to do all these things, to make their lives THAT much harder, spending countless years toiling to plant churches in spite of opposition, knowing that they would either die by old age under harsh conditions, or die by execution, and knowing that they got nothing materially out of it?
          And look at Paul. Paul was a Pharisee-which means he was part of the Jewish elite of his day. That means he had authority-he persecuted the church! Are we really to believe that Paul surrendered this authority to embrace a doctrine he once thought was absurd (and evidently, knew was absurd because he supposedly didn't believe it), embrace imprisonment, embrace hardship, set himself up against his fellow Jews (that in itself embracing the possibility of death), embrace public whippings (which he received), all for the glory of leading a burdened life rewarded by non-existence?
         Suppose we object: Paul wanted do it because he was thinking about how he would be received in future generations. Assuming Paul knows what he's preaching is BS, then this couldn't have been the case. The culture was predominantly hostile to Paul's gospel. They revolted against the idea of Resurrection. He would've been seen as crazy. Unless Paul had a reason to believe that the church would thrive (and the only reason he would have to believe that is if he believed Jesus actually rose from the dead-otherwise, from Paul's point of view, he knows he's fostering an idiotic belief that people will get persecuted and killed for), then he wouldn't have preached such a gospel for future fame or whatever.
         Rather, as a Pharisee, Paul gave it all up for the sake of being mistreated with God's people in Christ. Why? If we say Paul lied about it to, we're saying that Paul gave up his societal position of high standing all to be beat up, imprisoned, mocked, etc. He gave up his privileges as a Pharisee to embrace the persecution that came with holding such an absurd belief, and devoted his life to planting churches centered around an event Paul thought never really happened-even though he got no benefit from it, and his position as a Pharisee was (from a materialistic sense) better than his position as a Christian. I think that's utter nonsense. In the words of Paul himself: "What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.”
(1 Corinthians 15:32 ESV)

This is why the position that the disciples were insincere isn't a credible position among academia. It's simply nonsense. If a terrorist blows himself up, he clearly believes what he's dying for. If a Buddhist priest burns himself in Vietnam to protest a war, he clearly believes in Buddhism. If the disciples proclaimed a belief they knew would get them mocked, shunned from their community, persecuted, and killed, they clearly believed it was true. You can say they hallucinated-many New Testaments scholars go that route. That's riddled with problems, but more on that later. What's clear is that the disciples genuinely believed Jesus rose from the dead. I will build on this to make my case as I make more posts.