The God Test: An Experiment to Prove or Disprove God Exists

The God Test

An Experiment to

Prove or Disprove God Exists

Robert Bernhard

with

Jamie Bernhard

Robert Bernhard's 40-year+ career in the sciences includes working at Harvard's Computational Laboratory, MIT's Instrumentation Lab, The Monrobot Laboratory, the ITT (International Telephone and Telegraph) labs, the Grumman Aircraft Research Department, the Molecular Biology Department at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, and the Medical Education Division at Excerpta Medica (a division of Elsevier). He has worked as editor at IEEE Spectrum, Nucleonics Weekly, and Drug Therapy, and editor-in-chief at Emergency Medicine magazine. He has published numerous papers in peer-reviewed academic journals, including Correlation Waves in Brain-Like Structures (Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics), Chemical Homologue of Freud's Model (Psychoanalytic Quarterly), A Kinetic Model of Memory and Irreversible Thermodynamics in Biology (Journal of Theoretical Biology), and "Adrenoreceptors and the Anxiolytic Effects of Risperidone (The AMA Journal of Neuroscience and Neuropsychiatry). He received the 1980 Communicator of the Year Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, published two novels, a short computer networking textbook, and played Crimson Tide football (both ways) from 1950–1952.

Copyright © 2014 Robert Bernhard.

All rights reserved.

Cover design by Jami Normal

jamienormal@gmail.com

ISBN-10: 978-1-310-13477-7

Table of Contents

Acknowledgement

⁰ The Test & The Author

Starting Point

Author's Background

Personal Reflections of an Agnostic

¹ The Proxy Objective Marker for the Subjective (Soul)

² Overview Conscious Robots & the Self

³ The Brain A Brain & Consciousness Primer

⁴ Mind-Brain I Neuroscience of Free Will

⁵ Mind-Brain II Quantum Mechanics & Mind

⁶ The Test Outline & Practical Considerations

⁷ Criticisms and Reflections Afterthoughts

Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgement

I am deeply grateful for help I received from my son, Jamie Bernhard, a skeptical but open-minded chemist and mathematician. He compiled and authored the very valuable endnotes, dwelling over every sentence in the manuscript of this book, and making changes wherever the need arose to clarify a point, resolve errors or inconsistencies, or to focus the argument. All this was in the service of advancing an objective scientific discussion of this greatest of philosophical issues.

0 the Test & the Author

(Starting Point)

[Table of Contents] [Next Chap]

As followers of natural science we know nothing of any relation between thoughts and the brain, except as a gross correlation in time and space.

Sir Charles Sherrington, 1942

Man on his Nature

The purpose of The God Test is to propose an experiment (the God test) that is revolutionary from both the standpoints of science and religion. Although the central idea in the God test is remarkably simple, the test itself will be difficult to carry out, but it is not science fiction. The science it entails has been established already in principle, meaning that only technological advancements remain as obstacles. In fact, judging by the pace of progress over the past several decades, the conditions required to carry out the test could be at hand within a decade or so.

I begin thus with an appeal for patience not only in awaiting these scientific developments but in approaching this age-old subject with slow and careful deliberation, always retaining a sound scientific, or agnostic, footing.

It is true that the authors do have their own personal views, backgrounds, experiences, and so on, and that we are thence perhaps biased concerning what we predict to be the likely outcome, or what we feel the test is likely to show. However, the experiment is designed and discussed from a nonetheless neutral perspective, and according to the aforementioned principle. The authors, in other words, make every attempt in discussions throughout to fairly present all sides of all issues, inasmuch as it is possible, in accord with prevailing rationality. This includes issues that may appear temporarily (or may in fact, hypothetically) reject or accept, for instance, the beliefs of atheists, on one hand, or of those who believe in Divine revelation or a Divine intervention in our creation, on the other.

The God Test is not to be confused with works from numerous other authors who claim a scientific or neutral perspective, but proceed to the task of either proving or disproving the existence of God or the human soul by some old-hat pseudo-logical route, or the more typical hand-waiving arguments [1]. I do not set out to prove (or disprove) the existence of God, the soul, the spirit, or the survival of the self after death.

This is the first book and perhaps only source ever to offer a scientific test capable of yielding real evidence that could either support or refute the existence of (the Judeo-Christian notion of) God. It is based on the scientific method, but designed so that a valid interpretation of its results may have powerful religious implications. Meanwhile, the information in this book surely provides sufficient reasons for both atheists and the God-fearing (faithful) each to predict that the results will prove their respective and opposite positions.

The test that is proposed does not involve elements of faith, prayer, or mysticism. It is also unlike any other so-called God experiments described anywhere else. The test is not concerned, for instance, with whether individuals are genetically predisposed toward certain religious beliefs or behaviors; or with seeking to identify the neurological bases of individuals' mystical or religious experiences [2].

Although it is intended to put a scientific lens to the everlasting questions of whether God and the human soul do or do not exist, the test is not specifically designed to resolve these overarching philosophical questions. Instead, it has a rather more narrow explicit focus. Briefly, the test is targeted principally to determine whether a unique feature of our consciousness (the subjective first-person experience) can or cannot ever, in principle, be described or explained by natural laws. The experiment will provide observable data to test a (precisely formulated) hypothesis concerning whether or not this unique feature of consciousness is a product of natural laws, or biological functions. This unique feature, a phenomenological aspect of consciousness, is referred to throughout the text as the conscious feeling of the self—the most essential concept in this book. A large portion of this work is dedicated to discussing and characterizing this feature, which is the focus of Chapter One, The Proxy. Here, the term 'proxy' refers to the author's concept of the conscious feeling of the self, relating specifically to its role in the God test, for reasons that will be explained presently.

In any scientific experiment, interpreting the results requires some initial presuppositions (which may be explicit, though very often they remain unstated yet nonetheless implicit assumptions) that are the bases for such interpretations. The results of any scientific experiment can therefore be reinterpreted simply by modifying some of these presuppositions [3]. One such possible modification is presented, allowing for an interpretation of the test and its results that extends the more modest scope of the test's briefly aforementioned principle aim into the area of Judeo-Christian theology (to be discussed further in a later chapter—see below).

This extension follows from identifying the conscious feeling of the self as a marker or observable proxy for the soul, as defined in Judeo-Christian doctrines. It is indeed a major ingredient in the overall argument of The God Test that this conscious feeling of the self makes for a convincing observable proxy for the (Judeo-Christian) soul [4]. It is argued, moreover, that identifying the proxy with the Judeo-Christian soul is not just one possible interpretation, but that our proxy is the only observable feature of the human mind that is a feasible candidate for this identification. No other feature resembles the soul as it is described in Judeo-Christian traditions in a way that is consistent with the neuroscientific evidence; evidence which, for instance, rules out the use of other specific 'features' or cognitive processes, such as reason, or the intellect, memory, or emotions, for example, as alternative observable proxies, or representatives of the soul.

From the standpoint of empirical science, the feeling of the self stands ambiguously on a dividing line separating 'immaterial' or subjective mental phenomena from matters governed more apparently by known physical laws. In fact that is, in some ways, the very basis of its utility (our proxy's), for our purposes, and part of exactly what makes the conscious feeling of the self a feasible candidate for identification as a proxy for the soul.

For readers who reasonably feel uncomfortable with this—readers who would dismiss, out of hand, the validity of identifying an observable property with something that is practically by definition unobservable—I only ask that you hold off in making any judgment. Of course, for those who are so inclined, this is a hard thing to ask. After all, you may be thinking: if the mind is immaterial, then it is unobservable; and if it is observable, it is not immaterial; and, hence, whatsoever is observable cannot be considered as either part or parcel of the 'mind' or 'soul'. Accordingly, you would conclude, if this conscious feeling is to be somehow observed then it cannot justifiably be deemed a marker for an immaterial soul; or conversely, if it is in fact a marker for the soul (or does in fact demarcate the immaterial mind) then it will have no associated observable properties. Luckily (but not by chance), the test is set precisely to determine on just which side of the line this subjective conscious feeling lies.

Then from the Judeo-Christian presumption that the soul is created only by God, it follows that its presence or absence (as indicated by experimental observation) corresponds, respectively, to the existence or nonexistence of (the Judeo-Christian) God.

However, there is yet another rational way of interpreting the God test, and that is to consider it as only a test of the credibility of Judeo-Christian descriptions of the soul. The experiment, for instance, will reflect on the Judeo-Christian presumptions concerning when and how the soul is bestowed upon individuals by God; including the notion that God places the soul in each of us promptly after birth (Jewish tradition), or during our embryonic stage of development (Christian tradition). And furthermore, our detailed discussion about the proxy, and related issues, portends to questions—or more directly, to doubts—about the credibility of Judeo-Christian doctrines relating the soul to a number of concrete features of human behavior, including both cognitive and vegetative functions. Cast in this light, the God test may reveal a startling need for revisions of certain fundamental concepts in order to preserve a basic foundation of Christianity. Even if this, in the end, is 'all' the God test is said to have accomplished, its impact certainly will still have been extremely significant.

Here ends the present section's brief introduction to the God test, which has provided a broad outline, however, in lieu of a complete picture. Notably, certain very important details have been left out pending a further and more detailed discussion. In addition to what has been described of the test, and its basic construction, information regarding our human subject, the observations, hypotheses, and possible outcomes, as well as their interpretations, and so on, will be provided with greater depth in chapter six (The Test); and then reexamined in chapter seven (Criticisms and Reflections).

For our purposes, any religious tradition would satisfy the need for a shared body of knowledge to use in extending interpretations into the theological realm. The choice of the Judeo-Christian traditions was made as a matter of personal interest, and one that may be of interest to readers as well (see the section Personal reflections of an Agnostic below for discussion on the author's 'personal interest' in the Judeo-Christian religion). It would be interesting, and not too difficult, to apply to this discussion some alternative notions of the human soul, for instance, based on definitions from any other of the world's religions.

Returning briefly to the proxy, readers should know that this feeling of the self is not merely a phrase in place of a definition, not a stand-in word for the presently ill defined thing called 'mind,' although it is apropos. Much of the attempts to define the proxy involve pointing out all of the things it is not, which indeed points up the characteristic elusiveness of the subject. In any case, all descriptions of the proxy rely on concepts from mainstream neurology, medicine, and cognitive neuroscience.

In addition to dedicating Chapter One (The Test) to characterizing the feeling of the self, aspects of the proxy are further hashed out in Chapter Two (Overview: Conscious Robots & the Self). There it is argued that a computer cannot experience this conscious first-person feeling, although one can be programmed to demonstrate that it possesses all of the attributes to all appearances, despite experts' predictions that a truly 'awake' computer, subjectively conscious, will emerge in the coming decades (see next paragraph). The irreducibility of subjective experience, the impossibility of transferring and not merely symbolically representing the experience by its information content, precludes any such predicted achievement.

I began thinking on